“It's the shard,” he said, his voice rubbing against me in an orgasmic rush matched only by the sensation of his hands on my breasts, teasing and tormenting me until I wanted to scream with both pleasure and frustration. “It's part of the dragon heart, the essence of all dragonkin. You're sharing some of the sensations we feel.”
“Then the gods be thanked that I'm a doppelganger, because I don't think I could survive this,” I gasped as he took one of my nipples in his mouth, bathing it with a heat hotter than the sun. I saw starsâI literally saw stars as I slid my hands up his sides, my scarlet claws leaving little trails of fire on his skin.
“You will survive this and much more,” he said into my breast before turning his attention to its mate. I groaned as he bit gently on the nipple, my body tightening as he pulled me downward again, claiming my mouth once more.
The fire burned around us, but it was nothing to what was consuming me from within. I writhed against his body, my tongue dancing around his as it swept into my mouth, tension mounting deep inside me until I knew I was going to climax.
A burning brand bit into my hip as he dug his fingers . . . claws . . . into my flesh before trailing even lower, down over my hips and behind, parting sensitive flesh. I suckled his tongue hard as his finger dipped inside me, a thousand little muscles tightening, the intrusion as hot as molten steel. It pushed me over the edge, and I went flying in a way I'd never done before, time holding its breath for a moment as I changed, shifted into a form that was different, yet familiar. I was bathed in fire and light, and I threw back my head to roar my rapture to the heavens, but the voice crying aloud was not my own.
“Do not fear the change, little bird,” Gabriel said as I returned to myself. His eyes shone like lights in the gathering darkness, and despite an instinct of self-preservation that told me to get away from him, get away from what was happening to me, I was comforted. “I will not let harm come to you.”
“I never thought you would,” I said, bending over him to brush his lips with my own, but the second my breasts touched his chest, the need rooted deep inside returned, and my hands changed to claws, and my senses went back into overdrive, and I suddenly wanted him, all of him, inside me and around me. I wanted to submerge myself in him until he blotted out everything in life that wasn't the two of us.
I screamed when he shifted my hips and plunged me down onto his penis, a high, reedy sound, startling me when I realized that it came from me, but that concern was short-lived when he moved within me, and I was once again sent spinning into a state of being that went far, far beyond mere sexual climax.
Time held no meaning for me as we made love out there in the bush, enveloped in darkness, filled with fire, surrounded by nothing but sky and earth. I suspect that little time passed, simply because Gabriel's fuse was notoriously shortâas was my ownâbut it seemed to me, as I lay gasping back on my own seat, that eons had passed. I lifted a hand, relieved to see in the dim light of the car that the hand held familiar fingers, somewhat stubby, but my own.
“If you say a single word about not having foreplay, I swear I'm going to deck you,” I said, turning my head to look at the man who still lay prone on his seat. I mused again how beautiful he was, his body taut and lean, but not gaunt, not sparse in any way.
Gabriel chuckled, a rich, sensual sound that made me shiver as the cooling air pricked at the tiny drops of perspiration that still clung to me.
“I wasn't going to, but now that you mention it . . .”
I curled up one fist and waved it in the direction of his face. He laughed again, pulling his seat upright, grimacing briefly as he looked down at his side.
The stripes left by my claws were still visible.
“
Agathos daimon.
Tell me I didn't do that to you,” I said, leaning over to examine the wounds. They were red and raised, but not bleeding.
“It's all right, little bird. You don't have to look so stricken. They don't hurt. Much.”
“Oh, Gabriel, I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me. It was just . . . it was just . . . suddenly you looked so good to me. Not that you don't always look good, but this was different. This was very different. And those claws . . . I had no idea that I would hurt you, though. What can I do to heal them?”
Gabriel took my hands, which were fluttering around the stripes on his ribs, pulling them to his mouth. “They are mating marks, little bird. They are common with mating pairs of dragons, and I assure you, I would much prefer to bear the slight discomfort they bring than have you forgo making them.”
“But why aren't they healing?” I frowned at the marks. “They should be healed by now. Enough time has passed.”
“Mating marks heal slower than other injuries. Don't worry about them, May,” he said with a smile. “You gave me much pleasure when you embraced the shard.”
I looked back at my hands, my emotions conflicted. I couldn't deny that the experience we'd just shared had been beyond anything I'd ever imagined, but I didn't like the strange feelings that possessed me. “It was the shard that changed my hands? It wasn't just something that happens to wyvern mates?”
He watched me for a moment, kissing the tips of my fingers before releasing them. “I'm sorry you were frightened, May. I would like to assure you that being the vessel to the shard will change nothing about you, but I can't. It is part of you now, and until such time as it is removed, you will experience some of the sensations of what it is to be a dragon.”
I shivered, cold despite the relative balminess of the night air. I suddenly realized that I was naked, my clothing in shreds around us. A little noise of distress slipped out of me as I sorted through the torn fabric, trying to find something wearable.
“Take this,” Gabriel said as I clutched the wad of useless clothing.
I took the shirt he had pulled off, fortunately still whole since Gabriel had had the presence of mind earlier to unbutton it while I was struggling to get out of my clothing.
“It's lucky you are so small,” he said after a quick search in the backseat of the car. “There's nothing else here. I'm sorry I can't offer you my pants, but they would not fit. I had not expected that we would need a change of clothing, or I would not have sent Maata and Tipene off with our things.”
“This'll do,” I said, buttoning the shirt all the way down. The tails reached to my knees, and I had to roll the sleeves up several inches, but at least it was a covering. “I hate to think what we're going to tell your mother, though. She's going to know just exactly what we were doing.”
“I think everyone within a hundred-mile radius knew what we were doing,” he answered, amusement in his beautiful eyes. “You yelled your pleasure loud enough to wake the sleeping animals.”
I made a face at him.
He pulled me to him, kissing the tip of my nose. “It pleased me to know you were so affected.”
I rubbed my cheek against his chest, saying nothing, troubled by the remembered feelings that had possessed me. I didn't want to be slowly taken over by a dragon essence so potent it could change me into something alien. I was happy being myself, troubles and all.
The question was, did I have a choice in the matter?
Chapter Twelve
“
W
e should get moving. My mother will no doubt know we are near and come looking for us if we do not arrive in a reasonable time.”
“Does she know you're here because she's your mother, a dragon expert, or a shaman?” I asked a few minutes later as we were once again bouncing our way across the arid near desert of the region.
“The answer is probably all of them. As a shaman, she knows who enters the area. She senses their beings and keeps track of those who belong to her. But she's also my mother, and I have no doubt that word reached her of our arrival in Lajamanu.”
I thought about that for a few minutes, arguing with myself about whether or not I should ask the question that was uppermost. I decided that it was better to ask now, before I met Gabriel's mother. “You mentioned your father to me once but haven't said anything about him since. He's not dead, is he?”
“Dead?” Gabriel looked surprised. “What gave you that idea?”
“Well, you've talked a lot about your mother, but not so much about your father. I just figured they wouldn't be separated unless one of them was . . . well, dead.”
“He's not dead.”
“Oh. Good. He's here with your mother, then?”
“No.” Gabriel kept his eyes on the nonexistent road, avoiding breaking the axle on rocks and bits of dead vegetation, driving carefully through the deepening light, occasional flashes of animals in the headlights making me jump. “You know of the curse, Mayling. You know that no mate is born to a silver dragon. That includes my parents.”
“I know about it. I just thought . . .” I made a vague gesture. “I just assumed they must be mated in everything but name.”
“They aren't. My father lives in Tanzania. The only thing he shares with my mother, my sisters and me excluded, is a passion for animals. That's how they met. My father came to Australia a few centuries before the white settlers, wanting to see for himself the wildlife that was so abundant here. My mother was shaman for one of the aboriginal tribes and healed him when he got himself into trouble with a tiger snake. He stayed for about ten years, but eventually they went their separate ways.”
“That's rather sad.” I mused on how I'd feel if one of the other wyverns attempted to steal my shard-infested self from Gabriel. “I take it your mother is immortal, then? How can she be that if she's not his mate?”
“She's a shaman.”
“And shamans are immortal?” That puzzled me. I'd never heard of shamans being anything but mortal.
“Not technically. Shamans can walk in the Dreaming, though. My mother simply sends her spirit there when her mortal body wears out, and returns to the mortal world when she's reborn.”
“Ahhh. Very smart. How many times has she come back?”
“Too many to count. That should be her camp up there.” His eyes glittered in the darkness of the car as the headlights picked out a small cluster of ratty tents. As the noise of the car reached it, a couple of people stood up from where they'd been sitting around a large campfire.
A little spike of nervousness gripped my stomach.
“You have nothing to be nervous about, little bird. My mother will love you,” Gabriel said, reading either my mind or the wary expression that no doubt planted itself on my face.
A tall, elegant-looking woman with skin the color of espresso beans strode forward, her smile when she saw Gabriel as warm as the waves of heat that still rose off the cooling dirt of the desert.
She called out a greeting and enveloped him in a huge bear hug, kissing him on both cheeks and examining his face for a moment before she allowed him to introduce me.
“You look well, child. You look . . . happy.”
“For that, you have May to thank,” he said, holding out his hand for me.
“I am Kaawa Mani. I have heard of you from my friends, child,” she said as she eyed me from the top of my head down to my dusty walking shoes.
“I'm very sorry about my appearance. We had a little accident with my clothing,” I said as she paused to note the fact that I was clad in only Gabriel's shirt. “But it's a great pleasure to meet you.”
She looked for a second at the hand I held out, then examined my face closely. I had to steel myself to keep from shadowing, so piercing was her gaze. I felt naked before her, as if she'd immediately stripped away all the outer layers of my being and was looking directly into my soul. “You share a dreaming with wintiki, the night bird,” she said, suddenly hugging me.
I was surrounded in the warmth of her being and felt immediately welcomed into something that seemed to encompass both her and the earth itself. “I do? I hope that's good.”
Kaawa laughed. “It is rare for a nonindigenous person to share a dreaming. It is a good sign.”
“Then I'm very pleased,” I said, glancing at Gabriel. He stood watching us with a rather somber expression. “Although I'm not quite sure I understand what exactly a dreaming is. I thought it was the same as the shadow world.”
“Dreaming can be many things,” she said, putting her arm around me and escorting me to the fire, where three other people stood waiting. “Generally it is the story of origins, of how things came to be. But in your world, it can also mean an existence beyond the mortal plain. It is all that, and more. Do not attempt to understand it all; just simply accept that it is.”
“That sounds like very wise advice.”
“This is Adobi, Maka, and Pari,” she said, introducing the three men who greeted me with big smiles and firm handshakes. “They are fellow rangers from the local area. Before them, I name you daughter, and so shall you be known to all. Gabriel, I think you remember Pari fromâwhat on earth?”
She had turned to face him and obviously just noticed the red stripes he bore on his sides. I felt my face flush and had to fight to keep from shadowing as she marched over to examine the markings.
“These are mating marks,” she said, straightening up. “
Dragon
mating marks. I thought you said your wintiki was a shadow walker?”
A small fire broke out at my feet. The three men, dressed in identical dusty khaki shirts and shorts, looked askance and stepped back a few paces as I stomped it out.
“There was a situation with the Lindorm Phylactery,” Gabriel said slowly, glancing briefly at the three others.